Blog Parties

Monday, July 19, 2010

Eternal Love

Here is the beautiful bride to be. I just love her to death. She is more like a daughter to me than a niece.

So for her shower I wanted to make her a gift. I wanted to give her something that she knew came from my heart.

Now you know how I love my letter art. So I thought I would make her a sign that would mean something to both her & her fiance Michael.

They will be getting married in the San Diego Temple on August 14th where they will be sealed as husband and wife for not just time here on earth, but for all eternity. Their marriage will be eternal. So ETERNAL was the word I decided to use for their special sign.

Here is the finished sign. And because I am such a procrastinator, I made it Saturday morning. Right before going to the shower.

How did I make this? I'll show you. If I can do this, anyone can. All you need is a camera, a printer and a little imagination.

First you need to look at everything to see if you can find a letter somewhere in the shape.

See this iron scroll work? The end looks like an "E".

So you take a close up photo of the portion that makes your letter. And now we have an "E".

Next I needed a "T"

This is a plate rack that hangs on my kitchen wall. See how the railing in front looks like a bunch of "T's"?

I just took a close up & like magic, a "T".

Next I needed another "E". But I wanted a lower case version. It really doesn't matter if you mix lower case with upper case, but since I had two E's in this sign, I wanted them to be different.

One of my patio chairs looks like it has a lower case "e" on the back.

Yup, I was right. I did have to lay the chair on the cement to get this photo.

Next I needed the letter "R". But I couldn't find another shaped like an "R" in anything around my house. So sometimes I cheat a little & use actual letters from something else.

Like this Merry Christmas glitter sign. I just took a close up of an "R".

And got this "R". I love how the glitter gives it texture. Luckily I already had this letter from photos I took last winter. But I had not used it yet in a letter art sign.

"N" comes next. But "N" was a hard letter to find at the last minute.

Luckily I have this apothecary jar full of letter balls. And look, the "N" was right there front and center. I didn't even have to dig through all the balls to find it. It was meant to be. And yes, my patriotic decor is still up. Got a problem with that?

And here is the result for "N".

Next comes "A". The only thing I already had for "A" was an Eiffel Tower. But I wanted to try and find something else. So I was at Target on Saturday night & came across a fold up chair in the garden department.

The side view of the chair looks like a letter "A". So I snapped a quick pic & was done. I forgot to take a photo of the entire chair but you get the idea of what it looked like.

And finally I needed the letter "L".

This glider bench was where I found my "L". Can you see it?

I'll give you a better hint? It's down here.

Did you figure it out? If you use your imagination you start seeing letters in most everything.

Once you have taken your photos. You then upload the photos to whatever photo editing software you use. I use Picasa. It's free.

Once uploaded to Picasa, I crop the photo to whatever size I needed. In this case 4" x 6". I then make the photo black & white and add a little tint to make it darker. I then print it out on white card stock, cut it out & place in frame. I actually tape the back of the photo on top of the display paper inside the frame. That way you get the photo positioned in the right spot. Plus it is easy to remove & change out the letters to change up the sign.

This particular frame came from Kohl's last year. The positioning of the openings are a little skewed. But that makes it more fun.

Kohl's has been a great source for finding frames with numerous openings for making these letter art signs. Just be sure to wait until they are 1/2 off. I've even found frames at Walmart that work. You could also use a separate frame for each letter if you wanted.

And here is my niece after she opened up my "Eternal" sign. I wish I had snapped more than one photo as she is making a funny face in this photo. Doesn't show her true beauty or gratitude.

Here is a better photo of Taylor with her fiance Michael. Aren't they a cute couple?

And one final look at the sign. My niece loved it and so did everyone else at the shower.

Have you priced this kind of sign? They can be quite pricey. Since I already had stuff around the house & yard I could photograph, and I already had the frame, all this cost me was my time, a few pieces of card stock and some printer ink. And we can't forget a whole lot of love. This was the biggest ingredient in this project. But we all know that I have a lot of love to give, so it was a pleasure.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my letter art transformation. Now if I can do this, you can too. Now get out there and find some letters and make your own, or if you want, you can borrow mine. Be sure to let me know if you do, I want to see what you make. I'm noisy like that.

I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I linked to this post today from the new Home & Garden channel at Craft Gossip. :) My hope is to share many of the fabulous projects I see everyday with the vast CG audience. I hope you will not only stop by and subscribe to CG, but will tell your friends about the new category! Hope you see some traffic from it!

Your feature will appear in the main Craft Gossip RSS feed, on the main home page and can be found directly here http://homeandgarden.craftgossip.com/letter-art/

About Me

I love blogging as it lets me peek into the lives of other people.I love to see how others decorate their homes. So I may lurk on your blog to see what's up. I love to decorate, but I tend to dream more than to do. I hate cleaning, I'm not very organized, I hate to get rid of the things I love which tends to be almost everything I own & I'm am the world's best procrastinator. But somehow I manage to keep my household from falling apart & the health dept hasn't condemned our house, yet. Knock on wood!
I'm lucky to be married to a man who can do it all. Otherwise our house might just fall apart. We have 3 adult boys between us, 1 daughter in law & 1 grandson.